Figure 3
Differences in relative expression levels of undifferentiated cell ("stemness") markers among the three undifferentiated hESC lines. (A) Immunofluorescent staining of hESC colonies shows an expression of Oct3/4, NANOG, SSEA4, TRA-1-81 and alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity in all three cell lines. Bar = 100 μm. (B) Quantitative RT-PCR analysis of the relative expression levels of "stemness" genes (NANOG, POU5F1, and UTF1) in three undifferentiated hES cells. The Y-axis plots the fold change of the undifferentiated cell lines in comparison to the undifferentiated I3 cell lines. The expression level of the undifferentiated genes implicates that the I3 hES cells express much less "stemness" (undifferentiated) genes than the I6 and BG01V cell lines. (C) MPSS analysis shows the consistency of the expression levels of the undifferentiated genes (Nanog, POU5F1, and UTF1) compared with the results of the qRT-PCR analysis (B).